DistroWatch: Review of Xandros Desktop 1.0
Dec 13, 2002, 01:00 (26 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Ladislav Bodnar)
[ Thanks to Ladislav Bodnar for this
link. ]
"Selection of applications. By Linux standards,
the selection of application is rather limited, although this is
not necessarily a negative aspect of the distribution. Similar to
Lycoris in this respect, Xandros provides one kind of application
for each common task. You'll get Mozilla for browsing, Mozilla Mail
for email, OpenOffice for office productivity needs, xine for
watching DVDs and the list goes on. All applications included with
Xandros Desktop worked as advertised. Mozilla is pre-configured
with all major plugins so Java, Flash, Real Audio and PDF files all
work flawlessly out of the box.
"CrossOver Office. One of the much touted
speciality of the product is its inclusion of CrossOver Office and
Plugin from CodeWeavers. Both of these extras are commercial
applications and their presence on the CD has given the Xandros's
marketing team an excuse to bring the product price up to $99,
which is rather steep by Linux standards. A trip to the LGP web
site reveals that the investment firm has direct interest in both
CodeWeavers and Xandros, which gives rise to speculation that this
bundling arrangement serves the best interests of LGP, rather than
that of us, users.
"But of course, I am biased. Firstly, CrossOver Office provides
me with absolutely no value. No matter how well it works and no
matter how technically amazing it is to run Microsoft Office in
Linux, you should avoid using it. The sooner the world standardises
on open file formats and open standards and the sooner everybody
switches to OpenOffice/StarOffice, irrespective of the platform,
the better for the humanity. We have been at the mercy of one
company and its whims for far too long..."
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